


Irritating Injuries

by Redbudtree



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Gen, Gen Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-13
Updated: 2011-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:59:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redbudtree/pseuds/Redbudtree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Karkat's fixation with poking things can be painful, much is considered, and a plan is thought up.</p><p>Characters copyright to Andrew Hussie, the Emperor of Trolls himself. :33</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irritating Injuries

Poke.

“Ow.”

Poke.

“Ow.”

Poke.

“Ow.”

Po-

“For gog’s sake, Karkat, poking it is not going to make it spontaneously heal, no matter how many times you try it.”

Karkat turned and leveled a glare at the direction of the speaker, though he knew it wouldn’t be seen, and rolled his eyes as he tried to settle into a more comfortable position: an impossible thing to do when you’re slumped, half-sitting against a metal wall, on a metal floor, in a lab that reeks of spilled blood and who-knows-what-else.

“I _know_ that, idiot,” he said, and then went right back to poking at the bandaging that was wrapped around his stomach and chest in copious amounts. He looked like one of those human monsters, what was it, a “mommy” or something? Strange to have a mythical beast that has the same name as the female caretaker of the species, but whatever. Humans were stupid like that. Poke. “Ow.” Poke. “Ow.” Poke. “Ow.” It was a strange cadence that brought noise to the otherwise quiet room – quiet aside from the sound of keys on a keyboard, which, as Karkat moved to poke at his wounds yet again, stopped as a hand closed tightly around the nubby-horned troll’s wrist, preventing the offending hand from touching the bandaging again.

“Stop that. You’re making it impossible to focus and you’re going to reopen your wounds if you keep that up.”

Karkat glared again, but glares are particularly ineffective when the one you’re glaring at is completely blind. He would have yelled and screamed at the offender, but he’d found out the hard way that yelling when you have a huge cut down your chest and abdomen, cracked ribs and a (fortunately shallow) cut on your throat is not only painful but completely ‘what is wrong with your rusted useless thinkpan!’ stupid – something he had reluctantly acknowledged after he had finally stopped cursing out the pain, and also something he would need to bring up to his idiot of a past self in his next memo, not that he would listen! _Fuck_ , all of him that weren’t present-time him were useless idiots!

… And he really, really needed to stop talking about himself like that; it made him sound like a raving lunatic! Okay, new memo for the present-Karkat-who-just-stopped-being-past-Karkat: No talking about your past selves so much because it makes you look like your thinkpan is rusted, unless _they_ bring it up first and then you can just blame it on them not being current! Wait, that thought didn’t even make sense, did it?  
He wished he had his computer, but no, that was what Sollux was working on right now – and how he did it while he couldn’t see Karkat didn’t know and didn’t particularly want to know, but at least it didn’t involve licking the thing like it would if it was Terezi trying to put the piece of scrap back together. Of course, he’d have to figure out how to type one-handed if and when he did get it back, seeing as his left arm was as useless as his past selves, being bandaged just as tightly as his chest and secured at a 90-degree angle.

To make matters worse it had been his shirt used as the bandaging, and it was fucking freezing in the lab without a shirt on – or maybe that was shock or blood loss; Or maybe even all three. Damned if he knew.  
He was probably lucky to still be alive; but they were doomed anyway so that didn’t really matter in the long run. Dragging his wandering thoughts kicking and screaming back to his current predicament, Karkat tried to twist his good arm free of Sollux’s grip, but the yellow-blood wasn’t budging.

“I’m not letting go if you’re just going to start poking at the bandages again,” he said flatly, a frown on his face. “Do you want me to fix your computer or not?”

 _Shit_ , Sollux’s voice sounded weird without the lisp and missing so many teeth –which was all his fault like so many other things were, if only his past self wasn’t such an idiot- and only when he’d managed to focus his mind back to what the other troll had just said did he realize that Sollux was still waiting for a response.

“OF COURSE I –“ he started to yell, and then curled back up on himself with muttered curses that would have made an Alternian sailor blush for being an idiot and forgetting how much yelling hurt right now, and it took him a while before he regained his composure and managed a hoarse and (pitifully, annoyingly) weak sounding, “Yeah, whatever. I’ll stop.” The frown on Sollux’s face was more of concern, now, and maybe a little pity – which was stupid, because Karkat knew it was his past self’s – his own fault – that he was hurt this badly in the first place.

“KK, maybe you should-“

“Stuff it up your ass and save it for later,” Karkat grumbled, and flipped Sollux off as soon as his arm was free. Even if the other troll couldn’t see it, it made him feel better just to do it, ineffective or not. “I don’t care that you’re supposed to sleep when you’ve lost blood, I’m not going to go against my own orders!” (Although he had, and did, in the past for other reasons… never for sleeping, though, and he wouldn’t ever be able to sleep again anyway not when there was nothing left but visions of things more vast and terrifying than even Gl'bgolyb could ever have been - )

Karkat didn’t think he really had the strength to continue to argue with Sollux right now, and was secretly relieved when he shrugged, turned his back, and went back to work trying to piece Karkat’s ruined computer back into some semblance of working order – even if the keys were all going to have the wrong labels because Sollux couldn’t see what he was sticking where and everything Karkat tried to say to the Kids was going to come out garbled when he couldn’t tell one key from another… oh, who was he kidding? They weren’t going to live long enough for him to talk to the kids again!

Sure, maybe they were down to two murderers running around killing everyone – he deliberately kept his gaze from straying to the corner, where Gamzee lay slumped and unmoving, dead or alive Karkat didn’t really know because his memories of that fight were kind of fuzzy and Sollux hadn’t seen it even if he had been there through the whole thing – but it didn’t change the one simple fact that played constantly through the mutant’s head as a circuitous thought, over and over and over:

They.

Were.

 _Fucked._

He didn’t need the Mage of Doom to tell him that, even though said Mage was right here in the room with him, still typing away at that computer. Even if by some chance – he wouldn’t say miracle oh god no he wasn’t ever going to use that word again just no no no no no he wasn’t going to go there again –

Ugh. Panicking was hard to do when every breath hurt.

“Breathe, KK – you won’t do yourself any favors if you pass out from a panic attack,” Sollux’s strangely-altered voice again, and there he was kneeling next to him, empty eyes and empty mouth but somehow still alive and _so calm and relaxed even though he’d had his eyes burnt out and had lost Feferi how could he stay so calm it was insane, maybe that was it, maybe he’d finally completely snapped and he’d go around killing everyone that was still alive until there was no-one left at all_ \- then there was a smack across his face and Karkat found his gaze refocusing on Sollux’s empty eyes.

“Stop that; it’s annoying and won’t do us any good,”

Stop what? Oh, those pathetic little mewling sounds were coming from him? He’d thought there was a squeaky pipe or something in the hall. Belatedly, Karkat realized he had said that out loud and Sollux was giving him what was probably meant to be a disbelieving stare, which failed utterly since his head was turned too far to the right and thus was just “staring” at the wall. “Your computer’s fixed,” the yellow-blood added, before turning his attention to his own chat client and sitting down a few feet away from Karkat.

Oh.

Wait.

What? That was it? He was just going to tell him the thing was fixed and go off to chat with... was it Terezi? He hoped so, even if she was talking to Sollux and not to him it meant she was still alive, and Terezi being alive meant someone other than himself and Sollux who wasn’t dead or crazy or – great, he’d just lost track of what he was thinking about. Something about Terezi, and his computer; had he lost more blood than he thought? Well, Knight of Blood and all, maybe that meant it was worse for him to lose it; or better, or maybe –

This time, Karkat didn’t wait for Sollux to move and instead slapped himself – Hard enough that it stung, before climbing to his feet (harder than he thought with one arm completely-nonfunctional and unable to breathe properly), heading unsteadily to his computer and opening Trollian. He was aiming to alleviate some of his boredom, terror and pain by trying to ensure that _someone_ would survive this stupid game, even if it was the humans and not his own species.

That and he should probably let John know he was still alive, if just for a little while longer. The kid was probably panicking or something – no, wait, he was talking to someone else. Wait.

What?!?

He’d told John that he was going to die and instead of worrying he was having some kind of happy chit-chat session with some kind of stupid smile on his face?!? Okay, that was it. Karkat may have been incapable of physically yelling for the moment, but his capslock was on (he thought, at least; it had apparently been replaced with a shift key) and he could do ALL OF THE SHOUTING HE WANTED at the human who he had been idiotic enough to think might feel some scrap of pity for him in his last, dying moments as a failed leader – even if they weren’t his last moments.

Yet.

|PESTERLOG|  
\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling ectoBiologist [EB] --

CG: YOU.  
EB: karkat, you’re okay!  
EB: you are okay, right? or is this another past conversation for you? i hope it’s not.  
CG: YOU HOPE IT ISN’T WHAT, IDIOT?  
CG: A GHOST COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU?  
CG: TOO BAD FOR YOU, I’M STILL ALIVE.  
CG: FOR NOW. MOST OF US AREN’T, BUT OBVIOUSLY THAT DOESN’T MATTER TO YOU SINCE YOU’RE SITTING THERE HAVING A FUCKING TEA PARTY WITHOUT A CARE IN THE WORLD!  
EB: it is you! i’m glad you’re okay!  
EB: you had me worried, karkat!  
CG: DID I? REALLY? BECAUSE FROM MY PERSPECTIVE IT REALLY LOOKS LIKE YOU’VE BEEN WORRYING YOUR PINK, SQUISHY EXCUSE FOR A THINKPAN OFF, HAVING A NICE CHAT ABOUT THE WEATHER AND TEATIME OR WHATEVER.  
CG: HOW HAVE THINGS BEEN IN FUCKING SUNSHINE LAND, JOHN? GOOD?  
CG: BECAUSE IT HASN’T BEEN HERE. IT’S BEEN NOTHING OVER HERE BUT HORRORTERRORS. HORRORTERRORS AND RAINING BLOOD ALL OVER THE PLACE.  
CG: I WISH I WAS JOKING ABOUT THE LAST PART OF THAT SENTENCE.  
CG: AND I HOPE YOU APPRECIATE HOW TRULY PISSED OFF I AM FOR ME TO TYPE THIS MUCH.  
CG: IT’S NOT EASY TO TYPE WITH ONE HAND.  
EB: no, karkat, I really was worried!  
EB: wait, why are you typing with one hand? are you okay?  
CG: I’M TYPING WITH ONE HAND BECAUSE THE CLOWN CUT MY OTHER ARM OFF.  
CG: IDIOT.  
EB: oh my god! really?!?!?! you’re just trolling me again right, you’re not really hurt that bad! you can’t be.  
CG: NO.  
CG: WELL, NOT QUITE.  
CG: CLOSE ENOUGH THOUGH, I CAN’T USE IT. IT’S LIKE A LIMP DISHRAG THAT SENDS DISGUSTINGLY STRONG WAVES OF PAIN AND TAUNTS ME WITH ITS USELESSNESS.  
EB: oh my god, karkat, i’m so sorry! is there anything i can do?  
CG: UNLESS YOU SOMEHOW FIND A WAY TO BREAK INTO MY SESSION AND STOP THE REST OF THE MURDEROUS IDIOTS OUT THERE FROM FUCKING AROUND WITH ALL OF OUR LIVES, NO.  
CG: WE’RE PRETTY MUCH DOOMED NOW.  
CG: SO.  
CG: JUST KEEP YOURSELVES ALIVE. SOMEONE NEEDS TO WIN THIS GAME AND END THIS CLUSTERFUCK ALREADY.  
EB: well just try to hang in there, karkat! I’ll find a way to help you. maybe i can get into your session somehow! i’ll ask jade about it.  
EB: try to stay safe. i’ll check in again soon.  
EB: ok?  
CG: WAIT.  
CG: WHAT.  
CG: I DIDN’T MEAN FOR YOU TO DO THAT! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?!?  
CG: JOHN, GET BACK HERE!  
\-- ectoBiologist [EB] ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist [CG] --

Karkat must have remained staring at the screen for a while after that conversation ended, but he didn’t really know for how long – after all, time was kind of meaningless aside from that relentless countdown clock. What did John think he could do? He was in a totally different incipisphere, functioning on an essentially separate timeline (or something like that) – just what did the stupid kid think he could do?!?

Whatever. Karkat didn’t care – let the idiot nooksucker get himself killed trying to be disturbingly altruistic. He was just going to sit here and watch as it happened. Hey, why was the screen so blurry all of a sudden? Had Sollux messed it up while trying to fix it? No, everything looked kind of blurry and indistinct, and it was moving…

Speaking of Sollux, why was there two of him? His dreamselves were dead, too…

\---

Fortunately, as Karkat found out, being unconscious was not the same as being asleep. He didn’t dream while he was passed out. However when the world swam back into focus around him, he didn’t feel any more rested than before he’d passed out. He woke to find himself sprawled, not directly on the floor, but on a pile of scalemates that had apparently been placed there to alleviate his discomfort. Or something.

And it was definitely Terezi’s sense of humor that every single one of them was red, so that meant she was probably okay. Or at least alive. Like he was.

Then he saw Kanaya and that thought was dashed to hell.

He hadn’t even noticed that his breathing had sped up to panic-rate again until he felt another forceful slap to his face to bring him out of it, this time given by Terezi – who was, as far as he could tell, whole, alive, and in one piece (albeit still missing her sunglasses). Relief manifesting itself as rage, Karkat reached up and rubbed at his face with his good hand.

“GOD, WOULD YOU ALL STOP THAT? IT’S GOING TO FUCKING BRUISE!”

Progress; he managed to get a whole two sentences out at top volume before the pain reasserted itself. This was good, if confusing. Once he’d pulled himself together yet again – this was getting ridiculous, why didn’t he dodge that club to the ribs?!? – he forced himself to sit up, scattering red scalemates in random directions. His gaze focused on Kanaya.  
“You’re dead,” he said flatly, too tired to give a damn about how far off the charts this was registering on his weird-shit-o-meter. “How are you here if you’re dead?” Kanaya shrugged for a moment, and smiled. Was it just him or were her fangs… fang-ier than normal? And there was blood at the corner of her mouth... there was only one troll with blood that color around here – Feferi’s blood? Suddenly the gleam in her eye and the almost satisfied look on the female’s face made Karkat facepalm. “Don’t say it. Don’t even say it. You’re a fucking rainbowdrinker now aren’t you?”

Fuck this, reality was weirder than the horrorterrors in his dreams. Dropping his head into his functional hand, Karkat rubbed at his temples to try and distill the headache that was forming behind his eyes. “Alright, so you’re a rainbowdrinker. Good to know, at least you’re still... kind of alive. Just don’t turn murderous on us and we’ll be good, got it? Fine then. Go talk to the humans, maybe Jade – she can probably stop John from being an idiot and trying to come _here_ if you explain it right.”

It was only after he’d finished speaking that Karkat realized he’d said all of that without yelling or cussing even once. Fuck, was he really that tired? Rolling his eyes at his own internal monologue, he belatedly realized that he was being hit in the back of the head, not hard enough to actually hurt him but hard enough to sting. Okay, he _knew_ that feeling.

“What the fuck do you want, Terezi?” He asked, and tried to pretend that his voice wasn’t flat with exhaustion. He didn’t raise his head to look at her; he didn’t really need to – or want to risk getting drubbed in the eye, for that matter. The drubbings paused for a moment, and then resumed with a bit more fervor.

“You should lie back down; you’ve lost too much blood, I can smell how pale you are,” she said, punctuating every word with another bonk to Karkat’s noggin. Karkat growled softly but didn’t bother to stop her – she was worried and expressing it in her own, off the wall Terezi way. “What were you thinking, spilling so much of your delicious candy red everywhere?” There was a pause in the cane drubbing and Karkat felt something warm and damp slide across the back of his neck, just above the bandaging there. His response was immediate.

“GODDAMNIT TEREZI!” He couldn’t have contained the shout that escaped him then if he’d tried, any more than he could contain the inevitable cursing and curling in on himself that seemed to be the end result of any attempt to raise his voice above a whisper. “Don’t _do_ that,” he muttered, glaring up into Terezi’s burnt-red eyes, shaking with pain and shuddering from horn to toe.

Terezi’s response was to shrug and hit him over the head with her cane again, just once more. “I was just checking to make sure you still had some inside you; there’s so much spread all over the place that I can barely tell where you are,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically serious for a moment before she cackled, that stupid shit-eating grin crossing her face again. “But I never would have thought you’d be ticklish there! I’ll have to remember that for the future, hehehehe!”

God, and he had been _worried_ about her?

He should have been more worried for Gamzee. Speaking of which, was the crazy clown moving? Karkat half-hoped he did, and half-hoped he didn’t. On the one hand, the Bard of Rage had gone completely – Sane? Insane? What DID you call it when someone sobered up and turned deadly? – well, he’d lost whatever (in?)sanity he’d had and killed both Equius and Nepeta, and would have killed Sollux and Karkat as well if Karkat hadn’t by some chance – not a miracle never a miracle and sure as _hell_ never a “MiRaClE”, he was pretty sure by now that they didn’t exist – managed to fend him off in a way that he still didn’t remember. But on the other hand, Karkat couldn’t really bear to think that he might have killed one of his team – no matter how dangerous he was, Gamzee was still his responsibility, and to have killed him; wouldn’t that have met he had failed on a deeper level than he knew?

So he turned his gaze to the unconscious-or-dead juggalo and watched for movement. And after a moment or two, he was rewarded with the sight of a definite finger-twitch. Or was it cursed? Karkat dropped his head into his hand again, suddenly feeling so much older than his barely six sweeps. He sighed, a sound that would have been long and drawn out but for the fact that sighing hurt just as much as yelling so he cut himself off.

“Someone, _please_ tell me Gamzee’s not waking up,” he said – he didn’t plead, he was a leader (no matter how horrible he was at it) and leaders did not plead with those under their command. He didn’t bother to look up at the quick sound of footsteps and a ‘thud’ over the head as Terezi or Kanaya or – someone, but probably Terezi since it sounded like her cane – hit Gamzee over the head.

“He’s not waking up now,” Terezi’s voice called from the direction of the juggalo’s body. Karkat hissed and lifted his head, running a hand through his hair as he finally turned to look in that direction again. He immediately wished he hadn’t; there was blood on the end of Terezi’s cane, the same indigo that coated Homes Smell You Later. He swallowed, feeling rather nauseated all of a sudden. Forcing himself to take a deep breath – never mind the pain, Karkat closed his eyes.

“ _Fuck_. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

Please, no. No more deaths, not right now. He’d fucking break down right now in this exact spot if anyone else wound up dead!

“What? No, I just ensured he’d stay out a little longer. Drubbing him to death while he’s unconscious won’t bring him to justice! Besides, maybe it will knock him back into insanity, hehehehehe,” Terezi said, and if Karkat felt like he could smile at anything anymore he probably would have then.

“Yeah, okay, good. Maybe it will,” he said, and then tilted his head back to stare at the ceiling – never mind how it pulled at the cut on his throat. All was quiet for a few minutes as the group of four living – or three and a half, since Kanaya didn’t exactly count as alive – sat in silence, almost as if they were waiting for the other ball to drop on top of them and spread their innards out across the floor. Finally, at last, Karkat shuddered again – or was it shivering, and why was it so cold in this place anyway? – and forced himself to lie back on the pile of scalemates again.  
Forget his rule.

Fuck this, he was so tired he couldn’t keep his eyes open if he’d tried – he was going to take a nap, screw the fact that his dreamself was dead. If the horrorterrors thought they could torment him they would be surprised to find that he…

really…

didn’t…

give a…

fuck.

And right now, sleep and the horrorterrors sounded a lot better than staying awake. He said as much to Terezi, Kanaya, and Sollux – or he thought he did, because his thoughts were all fuzzy and clinging together, shifting around and warping until he didn’t really remember what he was thinking about in the first place. He could feel himself drifting off, doubtlessly going to return to the nightmares that he had been desperately trying to escape since they’d started playing this stupid game, but he couldn’t bring himself to be bothered by it.

Because really, after everything that he had faced so far, and everything that was yet to come – and he knew that there was still something coming, tired as he was, because such an enormous clusterfuck as this couldn’t possibly be through with them yet, and that wasn’t even including John’s little “plan” into the equation…

God, what had he just been thinking about? His eyes closed, and there was motion; someone was moving him, supporting him… it felt weird, but kind of in a nice way… still, he made some kind of sound of protest even as he was hushed and lightly tapped over the back of the head with… something…

And then the waking world faded away, replacing the horrors of that world with those of the sleeping one.


End file.
